The Mayor's House

[Vault Boy]

The house of Crossway's Mayor.

[Russel Wade]

A short, succinct rapping could be heard at the door. It had a sense of urgency behind it, as if the knocker thought he might be able speed up the resident by conveying the importance of the issue at hand while still being polite about it. Russel stood impatiently outside the door. He was beginning to get nervous about being in town. Although The Beast was supposedly a few days away, he wanted to skip town as soon as possible.

[Vault Boy]

The door opened.

"Yeeeeees?"

[Russel Wade]

"Hello, good sir. My name is Russel Wade. I recently found myself at the old correctional facility and happened to find this man," He motioned to the legion soldier, "Locked up in one of the cells. We happened to get into a little conversation and he let it slip that his band of merry men was making it's way down south-towards this fine town o' yours. Maybe he can expand the details." Russel said, speaking a bit faster than normal. He stepped to the side to allow the legionnaire room to speak to the mayor face-to-face.

[Vault Boy]

"The Beast of Bakersfield is almost here to wipe this cesspool from the face of the earth." The legionaire said.

Turning to Russell,

"May I leave now?"

[Russel Wade]

"Oh. Uh...Yeah, sure." He didn't know why, but for some reason the ghoul had imagined the soldier doing a bit more in the way of convincing. He had, however, fulfilled his end of the deal. "You can go ahead and leave now. Thanks, I guess."

After he was gone, then Russel turned back to the mayor. "Okay, seems like you guys are screwed, right? Even if you up and leave right now, you'll only be a few days ahead of them, and there's no doubt a bunch of extremely trained slaves can move a little bit faster than an entire town with women and children and elderly. That's where I come in.

"If you recall, I said I had been exploring the prison. Well, I managed to make the security system, WARDEN, believe that I was in charge of running the prison. The warden gets their own skeleton key, and before I blew the joint, I told the computer that anyone who had this key was to be the new Warden.

"Way I figure it is you guys will be a lot safer in there then you will be trying to get into some other town. Hell, maybe y'all can make it the new Crossway. I really don't care. The bottom line is, I have a way to keep your town safe. But it's gonna cost ya." (B) thought oat hurt from talking so much, but he hoped, for both his sake and the town's, the mayor had something to offer him.

[Vault Boy]

The Legionaire nods and leaves.

The mayor just listens, and afterwards nods,

"Ah, so that's what it always comes down to isn't it? Money?" He said disgusted.

"We have 400 caps in a fund we were going to use to build a new school, would that be enough, or do you need to extort more?"

Pacing,

"Furthermore, there is a Brotherhood of Steel Battalion camped outside the city. Do you honestly believe they won't prevail against a band of rapists in hockey pads?"

[Russel Wade]

Russel looked indignant. "Fine, if you honestly believe that the boy scouts can help you. Just know that I wasn't trying to extort you, I was trying to help. If you're naive enough to think that people are going to go out of their way to help anybody other than number one, you need to spend more time out there," he pointed out of the town, into the wasteland, "Y'know what? I don't even need this thing anymore. Just fucking take it. See you around." Russel tossed the key to the mayor before turning away. When his back was to the man, his expression changed into something more pained. God, what was he doing? An entire town was about to be 'wiped from the face of the earth' and all he could thing about was money. Is that what it had really come to? As soon as possible, he was going to spend a few hours with that scotch.

With that Wade walked away, going to the bar to pick up his stuff.